


Marked in Two Hearts

by RedHorse



Series: Marked [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, M/M, Multi, Murder Mystery, Possession, Tomarry Discord Secret Santa 2018, canon divergent from Chamber of Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 13:48:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17101754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Once a vessel has been occupied long enough, they become a true host, forever vulnerable to future possession by the hostile force. The only remedy isConsumpto Susceptor—or, in contemporary parlance, “to kill the host.”





	Marked in Two Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trashgoblinwizardparty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashgoblinwizardparty/gifts).



> TO MITH! I tried to write something you would like, so I hope you do, especially because it's hella long. You're the best! Merry winter holiday season to you!

1992

Ginny couldn’t wait to get on the train, but of course her mother wouldn’t stop smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her robes and stray hairs from her plait.

“Mum,” Ginny protested. “I need to _go_.”

Molly sighed and smiled down at Ginny. Then something uncertain moved through her eyes, and she fished a small amulet on a delicate gold chain from her pocket.

Ginny’s eyes widened. “That’s the necklace from when I was a baby.” Her mother had shown it to her before. And once, eavesdropping, Ginny had heard her parents arguing about selling it; apparently it was worth a lot of money. Molly wouldn’t hear of it. 

“It’ll make me feel better if you have it,” Molly said. Ginny nodded, mesmerized by the twilight gleam of the dark blue stone. She didn’t like to think of herself as materialistic, but having so few luxuries her whole life made the idea of a piece of fine jewelry quite seductive, regardless of its grim history.

“Thanks, Mum,” she breathed, reaching out to take it. Molly smiled with more resolve.

“Wear it always,” she said, and Ginny nodded and slipped the clasp closed around her neck.

For a moment she felt something like a tickle in her fingertips, but it was so fleeting she was sure she imagined it.

She couldn’t wait to get back on the train and find a place she could sketch the stone in the setting into the diary clasped tightly in her pocket. She thought Tom would be happy to hear she had something that fine all her own. 

Part One

—Harry—

2005

Harry straightened from where he’d been bent over the second body and sighed. His partner, Flannigan, was a tall, Muggle-born ginger with a paunch and thinning hair.

“Well?” Flannigan asked. He said it a little too loud and a little too sharply, which used to offend Harry until he’d learned that was just how Flannigan was. Slightly off-key with all people at all times.

“I agree with you,” Harry said, noticing again how the blood which had pooled under her head couldn’t be traced to the chest wound which appeared to have killed her. “It was a decent cover-up. I’m actually surprised the Muggles realized they should call us.”

Flannigan snorted. “They didn’t,” he said. “I happened to catch it on my read-through.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “You’re still doing that?” 

Kingsley had, last Harry knew, forbidden Flannigan from indulging his habit of stopping in at the Muggle precincts and reviewing all their open files. He _usually_ didn’t need the Obliviators afterward, but sometimes he did. That same clumsiness with people made Flannigan’s Notice-Me-Not rather weak.

“Yes,” Flannigan sniffed, looking stubborn. “Kingsley will have to eat his words now.”

Harry sighed and chose not to engage. Besides, Flannigan had a point. Someone had used magic to kill three Muggles in a hotel, and then tried to make it look like a Muggle had done it. The cover-up was quite convincing.

The image of the hallway and its stained carpet was wavering, like something reflected in a pool alive with ripples, and Harry felt vaguely seasick, as he often did when seeing a Muggle memory in the Pensieve.

“Let’s go,” he said to Flannigan.

“We’re already going,” Flannigan agreed, and they both pulled back at the same time, tucking their chins to avoid knocking their heads together with the unthinking ease of long practice.

“Heard anything about Head Auror?” Flannigan asked casually as they thanked the memory keeper and trailed from the pensieve room.

“No,” Harry said. He hated this subject, which meant that his friends never broached the topic and Ginny used it to tease him mercilessly. It surprised him that Flannigan would mention it, not because he thought it would bother Harry, but because he made a point of never touching upon Harry’s fame, and this felt corollary.

“Surely they’ll offer it to you,” Flannigan insisted, but not in the cajoling way someone else would. He just sounded matter-of-fact and vaguely exasperated. One of Harry’s favorite things about Flannigan was how Harry never could impress him.

“Well, if they do, it will be political.”

Flannigan laughed the way he always did: a high, single bark that never failed to startle Harry. It didn’t mean he thought something was funny, so Harry never saw it coming.

“These things always are. Don’t think you’re _special_ , Potter.”

Harry grinned, looking up and over at Flannigan fondly as they walked side by side. “If I ever dared to think that, I’m sure you’d set me straight.”

When they got to the body room, the Muggle corpse was laid out just as Harry had expected. What he hadn’t expected were the Aurors and Kingsley who were crowded into the room so that Harry could barely see the body.

“Harry—you’re not—” Kingsley fumbled, which was so unlike him Harry knew at once that something was seriously wrong. “That is, Robards?”

The people in the room were hastily rearranging themselves to shield the body from view, but Harry had already seen the golden net of a magical signature they’d alit over her head wound, an eerie halo. It was as anonymous to Harry’s naked eye as a fingerprint; he’d never gotten the hang of analyzing them with close study, let alone a passing glance.

“You recognize the signature then?” _And you think I’ll react badly to the name_. He frowned, but though the list of people Harry cared about was long, he wasn’t truly close to that many anymore. He couldn’t imagine any of the Weasleys or his Ministry pick-up Quidditch team on a killing spree.

The Aurors seemed to be playing a silent game of “not it,” furiously exchanging glances and shaking their heads. Robards must have lost, because he sighed as though deeply pained and marched purposefully toward Harry, seizing his arm and half-shoving him several paces down the hall.

When he determined they had sufficient privacy, he cleared his throat, then glared over at Flannigan, who was only a foot away, carefully within earshot.

“Don’t worry about him,” Harry muttered. “There’s nothing you could have to say that shouldn’t be said in front of my partner.” He was surprised how true that was, and very deliberately didn’t look at Flannigan as he said it.

Robards looked doubtful, and also seemed to be searching in vain for an expression that would convey empathy, and instead was just making a series of grimaces.

“The signature is Weasley’s,” he said, then winced at his own imprecision, even as Harry asked the follow-up question through a wave of shock.

“Which Weasley?” He hadn’t heard from Charlie in a while and Percy was...well, _Percy_ , but probably incapable of killing anyone, let alone…

“ _Ginevra_ Weasley. It’s...it’s Ginny’s signature, Potter.”

Harry laughed; or rather, he was so startled that his disbelief escaped him with a brief, sharp noise. He sounded like Flannigan, he thought vaguely. They must be spending too much time together.

“It’s a mistake,” Harry said firmly. When he drew his wand Robards leapt back and drew his wand too. It all could have gone wrong, but Flannigan stepped forward to put a restraining hand on Harry’s forearm.

Harry glared at them. “I need to find Ginny,” he said through his teeth. Wasn’t it obvious?

“This is why you shouldn’t have been down here.” Robards was adamant. “You know protocol, Potter. I have to ask for your wand.”

Harry _did_ know the protocol, but it felt much different, seen from this vantage point. “No,” he said quietly, and Robards stopped grimacing and outright scowled.

“Potter…!”

“I have to make sure she’s all right,” Harry insisted.

Robards continued to look guarded, fingers tight on his wand. “She’s fine, Potter. She’s been detained. And she didn’t… Potter, she didn’t deny any of the allegations. She declined Legilimency. It’s already over.”

Harry felt like he’d been kicked. “But you’re only just now examining the body,” he said faintly. “It can’t… it’s not Ginny.” But as he shuffled through the alternatives in his mind, Harry couldn’t think what other answer there could be. Polyjuice wouldn’t copy a magical signature. What would? Could she have been under Imperius? But then why wouldn’t she have seized the opportunity to clear her name with Legilimency?

“I need to talk to her.”

“Potter, she was very specific. She doesn’t want to see anyone. Including you.”

****

There was a five minute trial, which the Wizengamot closed to the public at Ginny’s request in exchange for her cooperation. Later, Harry was assured that Ginny had given her confession under Veritaserum, and had been thoroughly checked for mental competence before they accepted it. She hadn’t given an embellished account or offered any reasons, let alone excuses. She had not been emotional, and when they sentenced her to twenty-five years in Azkaban, she nodded her understanding and went quietly with the Aurors.

A week into her sentence, Harry was finally able to pull all the necessary strings to visit her despite her ongoing refusal to consent. The guard led him through the perpetually damp corridors and Harry thought that he should have listened more to Hermione about the conditions there, rather than moving on to other causes as soon as they’d gotten rid of the dementors. Of course, he’d never imagined he’d be paying a visit to an inmate who had been—or rather, still was—his fiancee.

“There you go,” said the guard as they reached the end of a corridor of private cells. There were little antechambers outside each one, but the cells themselves were closed off from one another. When Harry stepped through the doorway the guard had indicated, he had an immediate sense of privacy, and for the first time he wondered if it had been wrong to ignore Ginny’s wishes and come here.

Harry approached the cell slowly, looking over his shoulder for a moment to confirm that the guard had hung back in the corridor. After a moment’s study of the grimy metal chair sitting near the bars, he conjured something instead. The wards hummed a moment against his skin in protest, making the hair there rise, but the chair appeared obediently. It was a plain wooden ladder-back, oak, much like what he’d sat in daily while attending Hogwarts.

“That’s not very Auror-like,” came a voice from the shadowed corner of the cell. He couldn’t parse the darkness there into shapes, but he knew who was speaking to him. Her voice was rough—from sleep, disuse, overuse, he didn’t like to wonder—but painfully familiar just the same. He was glad the chair was there to hold him up since he thought his knees no longer would.

“Gin,” he breathed, his elbows digging into his thighs as he leaned forward and strained to see anything in the persistent darkness.

She continued as though she hadn’t heard him. “Performing magic in Azkaban is against the law. A few mentions of _that_ on your record, and you’ll never make Head Auror.”

“Ginny. I want to talk about it.”

The shadows rearranged themselves, but he still couldn’t see so much as a silhouette. She was covered in the blanket, he thought, noticing that the little cot in the corner was outfitted with nothing but a ratty pillow. After looking at it for a moment, Harry conjured something cleaner, plump and fluffy with down, and it rested atop the original, incongruously crisp and white.

“You don’t have to impress me with your magic, you know,” Ginny went on, but her voice was quieter. “I already said yes.” Her hand floated out of the darkness as though disembodied. He could only make out the long wrist, the elegant fingers, the nails clean ovals, recently filed. She spread her fingers and tilted her hand back and forth, as though admiring a ring that was no longer there. It was their old joke, and it twisted the knife that lived in Harry’s gut.

“There must be something more to it,” he said, almost pleading. He’d seen the pensieve memories. At first he was sure he could resolve the impossibility of Ginny kneeling naked beside her victim and syphoning the life from him with preternatural ease. A dispassionate expression on her face while he stared up, begging silently long after he was too weak to speak. But there was nothing Harry uncovered that could explain it, and Ginny hadn’t spoken to him since her arrest.

“Just tell me what happened.”

“It wouldn’t matter,” she said bitterly. “In fact, it would be worse.”

“I know you didn’t do it,” he burst out, then stopped and blinked. It felt too much like calling her a liar, and really, he wasn’t sure whether it was true anymore. “I know there must be… more to it,” he revised weakly.

“Do you?” she murmured, and the arm, which had remained raised in a parody of a gesture, disappeared. “You know, you should send Hermione. She interviewed enough prisoners when the dementors were still here to know all about the conditions then, but I don’t think it’s much better now. At least fearing a few flying monsters would give us something to do.”

Harry started to argue, but couldn’t think of anything. Sometimes, though he wouldn’t say it aloud, he had a very similar thought about his own life before and after Voldemort.

“You should just go,” she murmured, and worse than venomous, she sounded resigned.

Harry didn’t go. But since he couldn’t think of more to say, he only sat there, in the sickly daylight that came through the window in the vestibule but didn’t illuminate the cell. He rested his forehead against his palms, and in her corner, Ginny was quiet, too. When the rest of the hour had passed in silence, the guard knocked on the open door and cleared her throat.

“Auror Potter, your time is up.”

The guard’s words seemed portentous. Harry’s post-war peace had seemed almost too good to be true, and maybe it always was.

****

Ginny’s imprisonment cruelly wrenched the tight-knit fabric of her family. Molly and Arthur wore perpetually haunted looks, and as they once had Percy, all the Weasley avoided mention of Ginny, lest the fragile calm be upset around the house.

All her relatives were in some sort of denial about the situation. Harry was the same. Ginny had finally accepted her father’s daily requests to visit after a week in the prison, and Arthur had returned, shaken and pale, and closed himself in the study for half a day. Whatever he shared with the rest of the family, the most adamant protests that the Aurors were hiding something died out in the Weasley ranks.

A few places where it was already strained, the family fractured. Bill and Fleur moved to Canada, where the scandal was less well known, or at least of less interest. Percy finally quit the Ministry—or was forced out, more accurately. He didn’t take the transition well, and they heard from him less than ever.

George grew quiet and withdrawn, and took to leaving the shop earlier and earlier to drift out into Muggle London, staying away until late at night so that he was always bleary-eyed the next morning.

Ron, being Ron, shouldered an imbalance in responsibility at the shop with dignified grace, and began hosting a parody of the traditional Burrow dinners at his cramped flat. It made his mother titter in distress to see his inexpertly cast spells shatter dishes and overcook the majority of the recipes, but sometimes she laughed, too, which helped ease the constant ache they all shared with her.

When Harry was wrested out of this holding pattern by the news someone who looked exactly like George had broken Ginny out of Azkaban, he went to Ron immediately.

“But how did it happen?” Harry asked for the tenth time, pacing the floor in front of the Floo in Ron’s flat. “How could he even…?” 

“How does George do any of the things George does?” Ron murmured, watching Harry like he was a lit stick of dynamite. Beside him, Hermione looked pale and rumpled. She’d just gotten home after a thirty-six hour stint in the Department of Mysteries.

But two days later, George was arrested, and consented to a thorough session of _Legilimens_ with the Aurors’ best consultant. The wizard shrugged and assured them all that George was innocent.

“It must have been Polyjuice,” George told Harry, “but whatever it was, I’m glad of it. Ginny didn’t belong in that fucking cell.”

Harry agreed. But then, his entire calibration of right, wrong, and deserved felt off. He no longer trusted his instincts.

****

“Oh, Auror Potter, lovely. Sit down.” The witch was tall, well over six feet, with an angular body that was accentuated by the heavy fabric of her robes. They fell in straight lines like a tent draped over limbs made of sticks. She had long, shiny silver hair studded with small, decorative barrettes that looked like wriggling fish. Harry knew Luna Lovegood well enough to know that “eccentric” and “reliable” were compatible traits, so he tried to rein in his uncertainty and sat down across the cluttered tea table.

“I’m relieved you’ve finally come to me,” she said seriously. Harry couldn’t quite determine her age; her skin was nut-brown and her complexion was flawless, but if her hair was a natural color, he supposed she was not young. Also, there was a depth to her stare that reminded him, in a sudden painful moment, of Dumbledore.

“Did you...foresee... my visit?” Harry asked carefully. He had never quite evolved beyond the childish impression of Seers he’d gotten from Trelawney, but he wanted to be polite and, to the greatest extent possible, keep his mind open to what she had to say.

“What?” She looked at him, then laughed. “Oh, no. I meant, it’s been some time since your first letter.”

Harry blushed. “Oh, right. Only, I didn’t really… that is, at first I admit I, um, _discounted_ your input.”

“Young man,” said the Seer, quite solemnly, “I have been a consultant to the Aurors for half my life. And because I know you’re wondering, that is seventy-five of my one hundred and fifty years, to be exact. I understand the skepticism of those of you who are called to serve the Ministry very well, believe me.”

Harry blushed harder. “I don’t mean any disrespect.”

She dismissed his embarrassment with a wave of her hand. “My art is only that—an art. It cannot be particularly channeled or controlled, only subtly refined, with focus and invested time. But that isn’t why you’re here, anyway. It was not a portent that brought you here, but my work in the field of mind magic.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed eagerly. “Particularly—”

“Possession,” the Seer said, nodding thoughtfully. “If you have the memory, I’ll use my own Pensieve.”

Harry tried not to fidget while he waited for her to re-emerge from the basin, which looked a few thousand years old, chipped and worn nearly to smoothness, though obviously it had once been intricately carved.

“Oh, yes,” she said at once, drying the bit of moisture that had gathered on her nose. “Yes, all the signs are there.”

Harry didn’t know whether he believed her because he wanted to, or because of an instinct he had to trust her, and didn’t know whether either was good evidence of his instincts’ dependability. He stayed quiet, and frowned.

“If she was possessed, would a Legilimens know?”

“Certainly,” said the Seer, nodding.

“But then why would she decline the Legilimency?” Harry asked tersely, fighting the urge to put his hands in his hair and disturb the spells that Hermione had taught him which kept it passably neat.

The Seer looked thoughtful. “Well, if the possession was lengthy, there’s the old law to consider.”

Harry stared at her, blank-faced, and she sighed.

“Once a vessel has been occupied long enough, they become a true host. Forever vulnerable to future possession by the hostile force. The only remedy is, of course, _Consumpto Susceptor_ —or, in contemporary parlance, ‘to kill the host.’”

****

Harry had been trailing the Muggle witness for three hours when he caught sight of the telltale shimmer of a piss-poor Notice-Me-Not, and stomped over to confront the hunched figure in a puffy quilted coat. He looked more and more familiar the closer Harry got.

“Are you following me, Flannigan?” he hissed.

Flannigan was unapologetic. He relaxed his shoulders and after hesitating a moment, let the spell go altogether. The shift of energy in his periphery made Harry sneeze. He hated mind magic.

“Potter, you need to stop,” Flannigan said quietly. “D’you know, the Wizengamot doesn’t even hear appeals? If you find something exculpatory now, it won’t even matter.”

Sometimes it was easy to forget Flannigan had spent six years as a Muggle policeman before joining the Aurors. Then he referenced the wizarding practices with such casual spite that Harry wondered why he’d become an Auror at all.

“They’ll listen if I bring them something they can’t ignore.” When Flannigan continued to look doubtful, Harry curled his hands into fists. “They’ll listen because it’s _me_ ,” he said in a lower voice, hating himself a little.

Flannigan laughed, making Harry jump.

“Well,” he said sourly, “if you insist, at least let me come along so you don’t wind up locked up with your fiancee for breaking the Statute of Secrecy on personal errands.”

“You can’t…” Harry began, but Flannigan gave him a deeply unimpressed look and cut him off.

“Apparently you need to hear a few things that I know you already know,” he said tersely. “If you go too deep, and no one’s here to draw you back out, you’ll be as good as dead, and that poor sod along with you.”

“I won’t…”

“And,” Flannigan continued, silencing Harry with another sharp glare, “you can’t know how it will affect you, because you’ve never been permitted to perform Legilimency on a Muggle, because it’s abusive and dangerous.”

Harry blushed, but if this was supposed to get him to change his mind…

He lifted his chin and nodded. It would be much easier with both of them, so Harry didn’t really have his heart in the argument. Flannigan led the directive with his hands casually in the pockets of the puffy coat. He was an eyesore to Harry, in lime green so voluminous Harry thought he might float in water, but the Muggles didn’t look twice.

The witness was in his mid-twenties, slight and dark-haired. He had the bearing of an athlete; an unstudied but naturally erect posture, sure movements. He stepped into the little cafe he always went, alone, for lunch on Wednesdays. Flannigan and Harry followed, sliding into the adjacent booth. Harry faced the witness, just Flannigan, their tables, and benches between them. Harry waited until the witness glanced up, saw Harry looking, and frowned and met his eye, then cast _Legilimens_ under his breath.

The spell had never been one of Harry’s strengths. But Harry muddled through, trying not to startle the Muggle, whom, if Harry handled this right, wouldn’t suffer more than a couple lost trains of thought in the aftermath. At present he was looking dazedly down at his plate as though he sensed a headache coming on.

Harry found the memory easily; the witness couldn’t keep it at bay if he tried. It was haunting him, Harry saw at once, day and night. Harry went in a little too eagerly, and with a sensation that could be artlessly compared to slipping on icy pavement, he felt himself sliding more deeply than he meant to go.

 _Fuck_ , was Harry’s last separate thought. And then he was deep in the witness’s mind.

_Carter wasn’t expecting anything much from the night. It was just a pub, after all, not a club; it wasn’t the scene for pulling. But then she slid onto the stool next to his and leaned over the bar, her arms long and bare and freckled, the red mane of her hair sweet-smelling and tossed carelessly over her shoulder. It was one of those almost comical moments when he wondered if there’d been a mistake, and she meant to be looking past him at someone else._

_“What are you drinking?” she asked. Her eyes were brown with rings of gold in them, and she had freckles on her cheeks, sparser than the ones on her arm. Carter didn’t know what to say, so he just raised his glass a centimeter from the bar in answer. She seemed amused; her gaze traveled to his drink and back, and he felt warm everywhere she looked._

_“Whiskey?”_

_At his nod she brushed her hair behind her ear and gestured to the bartender, and then a moment later she grimaced and leaned back from the stool. “I… I’ll be right back. Let him know I’ll have what you’re having, okay?”_

_He nodded, feeling sure she wouldn’t return, but she did, within a few minutes. She looked different; her stare was a little more direct. And when she sat next to him, instead of leaning in she crossed her legs and sat back on the stool, swiveling it slightly right and left as she studied him. He didn’t know what kind of a decision she’d reached in the toilets, but it looked like it was going to turn out alright for Carter._

_As though to confirm the impression, she laughed at his feeble jokes and after a few minutes casually rested her hand on his upper thigh._

_“Want to get out of here?”_

_She wanted a hotel, which made sense; that was safer, probably, than his place, which was all he had to offer, and if she lived nearby she didn’t mention it. The nearest place was one of the low-end, bleach-scented kind. He watched her pay, mesmerized by the way her jeans pulled tighter over her arse when she leaned in to sign the receipt._

_Carter wasn’t sure what to do when they got to the room; he reached for her as though to kiss her, but she chuckled and walked over to the bed, sitting down on it and patting the mattress beside her._

_“Take off all your clothes, then come here.”_

_He obeyed; what else was he going to do? It had never occurred to him to be afraid of her, though there was something cool and assessing about her that he was definitely responding to. As he stripped off his pants he realized the anticipation alone had him as erect as a teenager, and blushed._

_She saw, and smiled with a cruel edge he was surprised to find he liked. “Now, come here.”_

_Carter obliged. He sat next to her, hesitantly, just within arm’s reach but not close enough to seem presumptuous, and looked at her expectantly. She was reaching into her pocket, and she emerged with a smooth piece of wood, that was too long and two slender to make any sense to Carter in this context._

_“You’d like to help me out, wouldn’t you, Carter?”_

_He nodded so furiously he could easily have pulled something in his neck, but he felt loose and easy there with her. He had to get pretty lucky to stumble into someone who liked what he liked—or rather, who liked giving him what he liked. He was tentatively thinking this was one of the luckiest nights he’d had._

_“I’ll need you to say it out loud, love,” she said, reaching out to touch his mouth with the piece of wood, which was fine wood, carved, gleaming with polish._

_“I’ll do whatever you’d like,” he breathed. Her smile turned positively feral, and his cock leaked against his hip, and then he felt the strange sensation of all his breath rerouting in his respiratory system to go out instead of in. Air came out of his mouth like wind, and that strange little polished stick seemed to take it in, somehow._

_Horrified, Carter gagged and struggled, and the woman pressed him down almost gently, but with inhuman strength. In fact, it wasn’t her hands pressing him down at all, but some other, invisible force. She followed him though, close as a lover, keeping the point of her wooden object gently on his lower lip._

_“Shhh,” she said. “This won’t take long. Believe me when I say your life could serve no greater purpose.” She touched his hair, all the while the breath was stolen from him, and possibly the blood, too; the urge to breathe had passed, but he swore he felt his heart drying out; his skin cooling; his bones growing hollow._

_He was losing consciousness; the beautiful face of his murderer would be his last sight. Was this murder? It was so impossible, so outside Carter’s frame of reference, he couldn’t be sure. But in that last moment, he saw a curious sight, as though there were two forces in the woman exchanging control of her face. One of them had horror and regret in her eyes, which gave Carter a faint sense of hope. But he lost sight of them altogether before a winner emerged._

When Harry woke, he thought for several seconds his name was Carter and the woman he’d picked up in a bar had killed him. Then he remembered that his time deep in Carter’s psyche had only been temporary, and that he was Harry. That it was his partner’s homely face glaring down at him from the other end of his ebony wand.

“Are we in the toilet?” Harry looked around curiously. Flannigan muttered disdainfully and released Harry’s collar, by which he’d been more or less holding Harry up with his back to the grungy wall.

“I couldn’t exactly cast Evenerate out there in the open,” Flannigan grumbled. “Well? Did you see it?”

Harry shuddered, the full implications of Carter’s experience settling down on him at once. Ginny had been absent from her body; Harry could tell. She was only there at the outset, when she made first contact with Carter at the bar. And then at the end—skewed senses and reeling emotions couldn’t mask what Carter had seen. Harry also knew he was lucky Flannigan had followed him to Muggle London or he might be an unidentified and vegetative in some Muggle hospital at this very moment. He’d never experienced Legilimency like that, and understood better than ever why it was illegal.

““I’m sure it wasn’t her. The way she cast for one, and everything else. It…” Harry shook his head, half-smiling, almost laughing at how ridiculous it was that the best case scenario was that Ginny was possessed.

But by what—or who?

There was something familiar about the way she’d cast, but it took Harry weeks to put his finger on it, and another few weeks to figure out a way to confirm his suspicion.

****

The day the letter came, Harry had been flying, which was a temporary escape from the weight of Ginny’s absence. When he landed, reality was waiting for him, though it was slightly easier to bear than it had been before his hour in the sky.

But the letter truly broke the seal on his emotions; when he read the salutation, his hands began shaking so violently he had to spread the parchment out over the table in order to read it, stabilizing his palms by pressing them hard against its uncurled edges.

_My Harry,_

_I’ve been working on my Occlumency, and I think it’s had an effect on my dreams. Maybe by knowing my mind so well through the exercises, I can guide the plot of my dreams more often than not? This is how I’ve kept from missing you too desperately. When I’m asleep, we’re together. I may begin the dream swimming in the ocean alone, but I can bring you to me there. Or I may be flying high above the mountains_ — _you know, in my dreams, I don’t fear flying at all?_ — _but I can land anywhere and you’re waiting for me._

_Of course, like words, dreams fail._

_I thought I could stay away, but I’ve never been selfless. That’s your job. Will you meet me tomorrow at sunset at Hogwarts’ Quidditch Pitch?_

_Yours_ —

The letter was unsigned, though there was the beginning of a mark beneath “Yours,” as though the quill had rested there while the writer hesitated. The letter was very obviously in Ginny’s handwriting, and equally obvious, it had been written by someone else.

So, of course, Harry went to meet them.

****

Ginny was facing away from him, gazing up at the highest goal on the north end of the field. Harry had never gotten used to seeing the Pitch from the turf. In the center, from the ground, the stands and goals and space in between felt as enormous as the whole sky. The thought made him smile as he paused to watch the breeze ruffle the stray hairs of her long red-gold braid.

“Ginny?”

When she turned the sun burned down on her more brightly yet. Her eyes even seemed, for a moment, to have a bit of red in them. Harry shuddered. Though he doubted it was only a trick of the light, he wasn’t afraid. He closed the distance between them, meeting her eyes and looking for a sign he should stop. All he saw was a shifting brown-red-welcome gleam that made his heart pound in confused excitement.

Harry took her hands and searched her face. She hadn’t reached for him, but she let him weave their fingers together. Her palms were cool and dry. She was the barest fraction of an inch taller than him, and he’d always liked that about her.

“Is it… both of you?”

Ginny’s serene expression didn’t waver. She squeezed his hands and nodded. Harry’s breath hitched.

“I’m sorry about this, Harry,” Ginny said in a wobbly, breathy voice that didn’t match the look on her face. Suddenly she was holding his hands hard, a wrenching grip. Harry, startled, tried to pull free but couldn’t, and in the next moment he felt warmth on his back, someone close but not touching, before his wand was plucked delicately from its holster.

Ginny was strong, but Harry was slightly stronger, so when he recovered from his surprise he managed to free his hands and stumble away, turning to see the undetected person who’d disarmed him. He was a tall, dark-haired man who managed to look not particularly like Tom Riddle, and also unmistakably resembled him. The dark eyes roved over Harry familiarly, hungrily. Harry was so distracted he didn’t notice Ginny coming closer until she was grasping his arm, firmly but gently.

“I thought it was possession,” Harry managed, looking between them with rising uncertainty. He’d been so sure, in hindsight, that Ginny had a passenger who sometimes steered her, in moments Ginny could later discount as dreams or perhaps never recalled at all. 

“It was,” Ginny said quietly. She leaned her head against Harry’s shoulder, and from that angle he couldn’t see anything of her face, only the reddish glur of the top of her head out of the corner of his eye. “It still is, sometimes.” Ginny was looking at Tom Riddle, so Harry looked at him, too.

Harry didn’t know what he’d expected. He remembered all that time seeing a younger Voldemort in Dumbledore’s Pensieve, how real he’d seemed. But those were just memories. Tom Riddle had become Voldemort. And Harry had killed Voldemort.

Or so he’d thought.

“Thank you for coming, Harry,” said Tom Riddle. He still held Harry’s wand; there was something unbearably intimate about the way he cradled it in his hands.

His gaze moved from Harry’s face to Ginny’s, and they must have reached some unspoken agreement, because Ginny Disapparated and took Harry with her.

****

They were at Shell Cottage, which was the place where Harry had proposed. They arrived as they’d left, Ginny pressed against his side and his back, Harry wandless and with his arms stiffly at his side. Harry waited several charged seconds for Tom Riddle to join them, before he realized he wasn’t coming.

Ginny pulled away and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. They were wet, as though she was near tears. “Why didn’t you just ignore the letter? You had to know it wasn’t me.”

“I…” Harry was at a loss. He looked around again, and then squinted at Ginny’s face, still suspicious that they weren’t alone. She chuckled mirthlessly.

“He’s not going to follow us… yet,” she said quietly. Harry noticed that she hadn’t said he _couldn’t_ , only that he wasn’t going to. “This is your chance to get away, Harry. If you want it. But the chances won’t keep coming.”

“I… ” Harry sighed and looked at his feet, feeling his shoulders slump. “I missed you,” he managed, cheeks burning.

Ginny sighed loudly, then strode forward until he could see her shoes, too, and feel her arms drawing him in until his forehead bumped her shoulder.

“You idiot,” she said against his neck, and when he shuddered, she kissed him there once, twice. The third time was open-mouthed with tongue and teeth and before Harry knew it he was fumbling with the hem of her shirt, desperate to touch her skin.

“Wait...a sec…” she panted, clutching him tightly again, and Apparated them directly into the cottage’s single bedroom. Harry’s mood flagged for a moment as he blinked around. “We’re alone,” Ginny assured him, leaning away to fumble at his belt with hands that shook almost as hard as Harry’s. “No one’s been here since Bill and Fleur left for Canada.”

That was more than enough to resolve Harry’s inhibitions. He was half-hard by the time she was shoving his trousers and pants aside and taking him in hand, while he reached through the waistband of the back of her jeans then up her back beneath her shirt, touching her however he could.

“Let me make you come first,” he begged. He worried he couldn’t tolerate her hand much longer; it had been too long, and his emotions were too confused. For some reason, that always seemed to turn him on.

“As if I wouldn’t insist,” Ginny murmured, laughter in her voice, and Harry thought his grin could split his face in half. Still, he thrust his hips helplessly against her retreating hand, before he got a handle on himself in the next moment and walked Ginny backward toward the bed, one hand at the nape of her neck and the other tracing a slow path back and forth from the small of her back to the indentation just below her navel.

Ginny laid back and looked up at him with her lip between her teeth, and there was something in her eyes that made Harry pause.

“Or,” he said, his hands still resting on her thighs, “Let’s not, just yet?”

When she looked relieved, he knew he’d been right to hesitate. Before she could nod, he was crawling up beside her so he could prop himself up on an elbow and brush her hair from her face.

“We shouldn’t fuck,” she said, and though Harry was determined to quell his still-insistent erection, just hearing her say the word made him swallow hard. Ginny noticed and a rueful smile flashed briefly on the corner of her mouth. “Not until we talk,” she amended.

As soon as she said it, Harry realized how true it was. How Ginny knew him better than he knew himself; knew how if she let him inside her, he might not care who could crawl in and out of her head. Ginny had understood, if not always then at least since a very early point in their relationship, how Harry craved the sense he belonged to someone. One of the things he cherished most about her was that she didn’t use it to her advantage.

“How did it happen?” Harry felt he needed to know, and that if he did, it might chase this last sense of distance from Ginny. Even now, tangled so close together there was nothing between them but sweat, he felt he couldn’t anchor her. That she was drifting away from him.

Ginny had been gazing at the ceiling, but she let her head fall to the side and blinked at Harry. Her lips were parted and there was a blush high on her cheeks, and Harry was bitter with love for her.

“You’re asking how Tom possessed me. Or maybe you’re asking _why_ he possessed me.” Harry nodded hesitantly, startled to hear her say _Tom._ Not Voldemort, or even Riddle.

She paused and frowned. “I think he would have preferred to kill me. But he couldn’t, because…” she looked down at the necklace she wore, and Harry looked too. It was the same fine gold chain, and simple claw setting around a tiny green jewel he remembered from when they were children and which he had known her to wear constantly.

She plucked at the jewel and held it away from her collarbone to look at it absently. “When I was a baby, I got really sick. Mum and Dad hate talking about it, but I could have died, I guess. Mum must have gone a little crazy over it, because when they sent me home from Saint Mungo’s and told Mum and Dad they’d have to wait and see, she took me to a soothsayer. Weasleys aren’t supposed to believe in that kind of thing, and it’s crazy expensive.

“But Mum took me, and a bunch of their savings, and the soothsayer sold her this jewel and made it a runestone. And I got better. Probably just a coincidence, my Mum says now, but still, she had a chain made for it when I was old enough for Hogwarts and gave it to me. And it turns out that soothsayer was the real deal, I guess.

“It doesn’t protect me from him now. He can control me.” She said it without rancor, so matter-of-fact Harry stiffened and shuddered. She noticed, of course, because there were few things she wouldn’t, when they were skin to skin. She absently stroked Harry’s hair off his forehead, as though he was the one who needed comfort. And, he realized vaguely, he _was_. Ginny, whatever crises she’d had and which he had missed, was not merely resigned to her past and her future, but seemed to have let it define her, and strengthen her instead of making her angry and corroded.

“He can control me,” she repeated quietly, “so he could make me take the necklace off. And he’s had that ability for longer than I realized.” She frowned now, the first sign of any shame, and her eyelashes fell dark red on her cheeks. Harry murmured nonsensically and stroked her hip.

“Ginny, what’s...you can’t blame yourself, when you couldn’t stop him.”

She opened her eyes again. “I should have told someone in the beginning, but he convinced me I’d be killed on the spot, or at the very least people would think I was ruined. I was twelve, you know...I was easy to scare.”

Harry made a strangled sound. “Twelve?”

Ginny tensed, but met his eye gravely. “Yeah.” She swallowed and visibly forced herself to go on. “Then later, I could have told you. But I thought I had it under control. And I was sure you’d despise me.”

Harry considered that, still moving his palms up and down the warm planes of her back, feeling the little knobs of her spine, the swell of smooth muscle over her scapula, the curve of her shoulders and then the soft taper of her waist.

“I couldn’t,” he told her. “I could never despise you.”

She rolled into her side and put her arms around his waist. He stroked her back.

“If it’s any comfort,” he added, wondering whether it was a mistake to reveal this much, “I don’t think he ever took over when we were...um. Together. Like that.”

Ginny’s brow furrowed.

“I would have known, I think,” Harry added. “I think there were times when he _was_ there, instead of you. And I knew you were different. Only I couldn’t quite imagine…” he trailed off helplessly.

Ginny didn’t seem reassured, but neither was she horrified. She leaned in and put her chin over Harry’s head, and he nestled nearer, his cheek on the curve of her breast, and Harry wished she would hold him forever.

“You should kill me,” she said. “I’ve done the research. There isn’t another way.”

It didn’t sound like a command. It was not reproving. It was more like an acknowledgment. Harry recognized the distinction now, as he might not have before the past months had left their mark on him. Before Ginny’s arrest, Harry heard the word “should” and thought it meant “must,” but that was only because he had assumed that one must always do the thing that was right. And now he found himself lured toward a selfish reinterpretation.

“I don’t…” he swallowed. “I don’t know if I care.” Harry was glad she still held him like this, his face against her chest, so he didn’t have to meet her eye. It was easier to speak with the steady beat of her heart reverberating against his ear and her hand resting on his thigh where it straddled her hip.

“Yes,” she said quietly, and without judgment. “I know. That’s why we’re telling you now.”

“Can’t we just go somewhere?” Harry asked, almost pleading. “Isn’t there somewhere we could go?”

“No. He wouldn’t let us.” She explained without bitterness, “He wants you, and he thinks of me as a part of him. And he’s right; I’m a part of him, and he’s a part of me.” She said it all evenly, like she was teaching Harry something important, and her own qualms and reservations were long-settled if they ever existed at all. “So he won’t let us go, and he won’t leave us alone.”

Harry shuddered.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Ginny said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. “I’d understand.”

Harry didn’t say anything. Maybe he could have pretended to be strong enough to leave her, before she had been put in Azkaban. But now he knew that he couldn’t do it. He had those miserable months as irrefutable proof.

“If you do stay,” she continued, still too quietly for him to find any inflection in her voice, “then you won’t just be staying with me.”

Part Two

—Ginny—

Ginny had grown up with a child’s love for a hero who just so happened to be a boy her age. She couldn’t remember not loving Harry. When Tom had started to feel the same way was harder to say, though she could easily recall the day he’d finally expressed it in part.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented for Ginny to give Tom full control. Ginny assumed he couldn’t take it without her permission, but then he never tried to her knowledge. In many ways Tom seemed contented to be ancillary, though less so as the years had passed. Ginny had always thought it had something to do with what he was. A Horcrux, after all, wasn’t meant to ever have a body of its own.

“Is it fair, that I might never know touch, or delight in the pleasures that you and he enjoy so freely together?”

Ginny snorted. “This is about your _virginity_?”

Tom sniffed. “It’s about life experiences—the full range. Would _you_ be contented to die, having never touched, or been touched, in that way?”

Ginny sighed. “I would have, if you’d had your way,” she reminded him, though over the years most of the venom had gone out of this old argument.

“You really need to move on.” In the mirror, Tom rolled her eyes. “So, do you have an answer for me, or not?”

“It’s not up to me. It wouldn’t be right for Harry.”

“He’d never know. And I’d be sure he enjoyed it.”

“With your virgin’s expertise?”

Tom glowered. “Trust me, I’ve given it plenty of thought.” He cocked her head. “Is this about jealousy?”

Tom didn’t understand jealousy and probably never would. It was one of the emotions that didn’t exist in his range.

Ginny imagined Tom touching Harry while he wore her body like a glove, and jealousy was not the emotion that accompanied the idea. “Would I be able to see you?”

Tom went still. He knew she was going to agree; she could feel his giddiness as though it was her own.

“If you like,” he said softly.

“All right,” she said at last, and then turned away from the mirror, which meant he only answered in her mind.

 _When?_ She could feel his excitement like something crawling under her skin. Once, it would have made her rake her nails over her arms until they bled. Now, though, it just made her shiver, and not with revulsion.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

****

“This isn’t what I asked for,” Tom hissed at her in the mirror. Ginny was leaning heavily against the sink in the little lavatory at the pub, spent by the task of containing Tom when he was in this mood. “It’s not becoming to behave this way, Ginevra. You’re an intelligent woman, and you learned long ago that you can’t lie to _me_.”

It was all true. Ginny knew Tom as you can only know someone who’s a part of you. “Please,” she pleaded. “I just can’t...don’t make me...not with Harry.”

Tom looked considering. These conversations in the mirror, where Ginny surrendered her face and voice to Tom for his replies, used to be the surest fodder for nightmares. Those familiar nightmares where Ginny no longer knew where Tom ended and where she began. But over the years they’d come to feel natural, and they engaged in them almost daily.

“We will table this conversation,” Tom murmured, and arched her eyebrow. “But I will accept what you’re offering tonight.”

Ginny wilted with relief. The idea of a stranger touching her body, even when Tom was occupying it instead of her, made her reel with impenetrably complex emotions. But it was infinitely better than letting Tom touch Harry.

She’d never let Tom. Only Ginny had felt Harry’s bony rib cage and thundering heart when she rode him, grounding herself with her palms on his bare chest. Only Ginny felt the rasp of his nails on her back or the warmth of his mouth. Because it was _her_ body, and _her_ touch, when she didn’t surrender to Tom. She was convinced of this.

If she let herself doubt now, she’d have to leap from some high place or weigh down her ankles and walk deep into the sea.

****

The arrest didn’t surprise her. She had woken up with blood beneath her fingernails, and she’d found the rest of the evidence with a _Priori Incantatem_ on her own wand.

“Why?” she hissed into the mirror, leaning over the sink where she’d scrubbed her fingertips raw, long after the last of the blood was gone.

Tom made her face go slack and cool. “Because I needed the materials.”

After all these years, how could Ginny have brought herself to expect a different kind of answer? Tom wouldn’t realize that what she was asking wasn’t _why did you betray me?_ but rather, _why did you kill three people_?

“The _materials_?” she echoed, thinking rather hysterically that her magical signature was on the bodies and certainly, _certainly_ it was on file with the Ministry, unless they’d lost it sometime between now and when she’d been issued her Apparition license.

“Yes.” Now Tom looked excited. “It needs more ritual work, but the bodies were sufficient for the initial framework of an independent physical vessel.”

Ginny swallowed and looked away from the mirror. She didn’t want to know more. She couldn’t even be comforted with the thought that when the Aurors came for her, as she assumed they soon would, they’d be locking away Tom as well.

Ginny had never been able to turn herself in; she wasn’t sure how to explain about Tom in a way that wouldn’t end in her death, and she could think of nothing worse than dying. This, she recognized vaguely, was a phobia that came from Tom. Rationally, she could see the appeal of death at this point. In so many ways, she was so very tired, and her uncontained passenger was so very dangerous. But just as she had impressed certain aspects of her personality upon Tom during their tightly-knit formative years, the reverse was also true.

At least in Azkaban she wouldn’t be his vessel for carnage ever again, and Harry—

To Ginny, it was worse than the murders, to think that Tom might have used her body in bed with Harry. Maybe because Ginny had inherited from Tom a sort of vague apathy about the lives of people she’d never met. But nothing in her life was more real than Harry, with his uncertain smile and the way he burrowed nearer as though he couldn’t believe someone was willing to stroke his hair until he fell asleep and had to stay awake just to savor it. The shy way he began a rant, as though he didn’t want to trouble anyone with something as trivial as his own opinions. The awe on his face, even years after their first weeks together, when Ginny sucked him off or pushed him down and sank down onto his cock.

She didn’t dwell on the thought that Tom was interested in Harry. It was either something that belonged only to Tom and truly a coincidence, or it had formed in him, parasitic, because it lived so strongly in Ginny’s heart. Whatever its origins, they both wanted Harry. Ginny had known that long before Tom asked to fuck him. And if Tom had his vessel, and Ginny was forgotten in her cell, who would protect Harry?

When Harry visited her in Azkaban, she almost warned him. But she felt Tom very near in that moment when the entire story threatened to spill out. He did not speak, but the shadow he cast over her mind was communicative enough. He needed no express threat.

****

More even than Harry, Ginny missed Tom during the long days when he left her alone in her mind. She did not feel free. She felt empty. When he returned, as he always did, she couldn’t bring herself to dwell on her anger that he’d put them in this place; it served no purpose to rant and rave at him about concepts he couldn’t understand. So she just welcomed him back, again and again, and when she woke up alone she missed him.

****

Of course, she wasn’t detained forever. Tom wouldn’t allow it; he’d told her so, and he didn’t make empty promises. If anything, she was surprised it took so long.

When Tom appeared on the other side of the bars, wearing George’s face, Ginny knew him in an instant. Deep within her she felt the tension that she hadn’t acknowledged immediately ease. She had never seen him in any body but her own, but it felt right to be able to meet his stare without a mirror.

She’d suspected he was planning something; he hadn’t been in her head for three days. But she hadn’t anticipated him pressing a key into the lock, turning it like a guard would, nor the disguise. Subtlety wasn’t Tom’s strength. She had thought that if he made good on his threats to rescue her, he’d wandlessly tear down a wall on his way in and cast Morsmordre on his way out.

Instead here he was, going through a charade for the surveillance spells, down to looking her earnestly in the eye and murmuring, “Gin, come on, I’m here to set you free.”

Ginny thought of refusing. But there was no way for her to hide from Tom, in her head or out of it. He’d taught her that long ago.

“You’ve finished all your rituals, then,” she murmured when he held her close to Apparate. George never could have broken the magic-repelling wards that shrouded the castle, but she supposed the ruse wasn’t meant to survive anything but the barest scrutiny. “If the body will take Polyjuice, it must be fully corporeal.”

Tom grimaced, a face she’d never seen George make, and he didn’t answer. Possibly because even for him, resisting the wards and Apparating took effort. She could feel his magic wrap around them in a sickeningly slow, slow-motion version of normal Apparition. They eased bit by bit into the interstitial space, then, free of the wards, their return journey took a mere instant.

The effect was dizzying, so she clung to shoulders that looked like her brother’s longer than she would have in her right mind, while Tom patted her hair and brushed his knuckles over her cheeks. He loved touching her body; it was as though, after occupying it so long, he would always see it as his.

When Ginny could, she backed away. They were in Hogwarts. She stared at Tom.

“No,” she breathed, and he smiled broadly. His Polyjuice was fading, or possibly he knew the magic to reverse it. It wouldn’t surprise her if he’d discovered something like that and never bothered telling anyone about it. Soon he stood before her, looking vaguely like the Muggle he’d nearly drained to death before Ginny was able to intervene, and also a bit like the one who spotted them in the hallway, whom Tom killed so reactively she was dead before Ginny even realized she was there.

He was handsome, of course; Tom was a critic of human aesthetics, and wouldn’t intentionally look anything but pleasing. He was taller than any of Ginny’s brothers, with the luxurious dark hair of Tom’s original incarnation, and the same dark eyes. But otherwise, he would be hard to recognize as the same man. His complexion was still pale, but his mouth had a generous lower lip and instead of classically angular, his face was square-jawed, framed with a neat beard.

He looked down at his hands, his smile almost shy. “I wanted to look more like our body,” he admitted, “but the DNA didn’t have the right material.”

Ginny didn’t ask; she really didn’t want to know what he meant. She swallowed again and looked around the room, which of course she already recognized, so she didn’t have to ask whether Tom had really been hired as the interim Deputy Headmaster.

****

In Shell Cottage, Ginny looked down at Harry’s sleeping face with unutterable gentleness, and then up again to meet Tom’s eye. He was standing in the corner of the room, and though his entrance hadn’t made a sound, Ginny had known immediately that he was there.

“Is he truly asleep?” Tom asked eagerly, and started forward before Ginny held up a quelling hand. She never knew if he would accept her directions, and the dynamic of two bodies instead of one was very new, but so far she found him easier to influence than she’d expected. She didn’t expect him to leave her, but neither had she expected quite this degree of codependency.

“He is,” she said cautiously. “And now isn’t the right time for him to see you again.” Though in fact, she thought Harry was awake and merely holding himself still. A chance to eavesdrop; his Auror training wouldn’t let him miss it.

“Then _when_?” Tom sullenly folded his arms. “You’ve been here for _hours_.”

His tantrum amused her. “It could be weeks, or months. Years, even.”

Tom’s eyes widened almost comically. But Ginny knew better than to actually laugh at him. She also thought, with her there, that Harry would enjoy Tom rather a lot, but she thought it was early. Still…

She casually reached out to stroke Harry’s neck, her fingers disappearing into his shoulder-length mane. Tom watched her hand with naked hunger. Harry stirred infinitesimally under her hand, as though he _wanted_ her to know he was awake, but couldn’t admit it.

“You want to touch him, like I do,” she said quietly, gazing at Harry and beginning to feel distant from her thoughts. There was only the graceful curves of Harry’s nudity, for he’d shed his robes hastily at her direction before falling asleep. He was an uneasy sleeper, and she knew from experience how tangled up he could get.

Harry shivered and across the room, so did Tom. His eyes were gleaming, intent, and Ginny realized he too must know that Harry was pretending not to be awake and listening to every word they said. Of course, something like that wouldn’t escape Tom. Whatever his shortcomings, he had the instincts of a hunter.

“Come, then,” she murmured, letting her hand trail down to the small of Harry’s back while Tom practically tripped over his feet in his rush to join them. He slowly crawled on the bed, walking over to them on his knees. His hand hovered over Harry’s messy head a long moment before it dropped into the unruly curls. At the touch, Harry mumbled something and Tom’s pupils dilated at once. Ginny rubbed a soothing circle on Harry’s smooth skin.

“If he objected, surely he would wake,” she said, slowly and deliberately, and Harry trembled under her hand in an effort to remain still. “He hasn’t ever been with a man,” she added, knowing how that would please Tom, but she still smiled when his cheeks flushed with color.

“May I fuck him, then?” Tom looked at her with wide dark eyes, his fringe falling into them, lips parted and red.

Ginny felt herself getting wet. “You must be very gentle,” she told Tom, and he nodded solemnly, his hand leaving Harry’s hair to trail down his back with characteristic impatience. 

“I brought lube,” he said. Slipping his hand into his pocket without looking away from Harry’s arse. His legs had fallen slightly open, and Ginny could imagine what Tom could see from his vantage point. She knew Harry’s body from every angle, and standing where Tom was, she could imagine how he’d look, the dark hair on his thighs, his heavy balls partially visible.

She imagined Harry’s cock, pressed against the blankets and out of sight, but doubtless full and hard. When his hips twisted very slightly, an almost undetectable squirm, her breath quickened. She’d never once had a fantasy of Harry and anyone else, let alone Tom, but she couldn’t recall wanting to see anything more.

Tom was warming the lube between his palms. Ginny watched, still stroking Harry’s shoulders soothingly. “Good. Now get him wet.” She rubbed her thighs together, almost moaning aloud when Tom’s fingers, shiny and dripping, slicked up Harry’s hole. Tom had used too much lube; Harry’s whole cleft was shiny. Harry whimpered, eyes tightly closed, and jerked his hips to chase Tom’s touch.

“Are you ready, Tom?” She tore her gaze away from Harry, who was beginning to sweat and steadily shake with anticipation, and looked at Tom. His body was less jarring each time she looked at it, but still there was a half moment of disconnect before she recognized Tom with ease and a deeply-ingrained affection.

This time, however, she felt a flare of something else. Something akin to the way Tom used to help nudge her to orgasm by whispering in her head at the opportune moments. It hadn’t felt like sex with Tom, but just enhanced masturbation, so she’d tried not to dwell on it.

Now that he was made real, and in a lithe, athletic body, his nature of his appeal was more obvious. Especially when he rolled out of the bed so he could slide out of his trousers and pants, and his ruddy cock was out and in his hand.

“Tell me how he likes it,” he murmured to Ginny. “I want him to be begging for it.”

Harry made a muffled sound, and Ginny looked at Tom reprovingly. “First he needs to relax. Then, he might like your finger.”

“Yes,” Tom breathed, and let go of himself to crawl back up on the mattress and ease Harry’s legs further apart, leaving streaks of lube he’d been too distracted to Vanish from his hands, and lowering his face toward Harry’s body, he rubbed his cheek over Harry’s hip, and Ginny imagined the rasp of his bear and, biting her lip, resisted the urge to touch herself.

She saw Tom was waiting for her instructions and let out an unsteady breath. At this point, she wasn’t sure about the game, so she brushed Harry’s hair out of his face, leaned down and kissed him. It was an awkward angle, so her lips barely brushed his scarred forehead, but he opened his eyes. They were vividly, feverishly bright, and the look in them made her smile.

“Are you ready, my darling?”

Harry let out a little huff of air, and Ginny waited, insisting on words, as she had done so many times when it had been just the two of them. Or rather, when Tom had still been safely relegated to the outskirts of her mind.

“I’m ready,” he whispered, low and rough, and Ginny smiled at him then looked at Tom, who was waiting with his hand hovering over Harry’s arse. She nodded.

“Go ahead, Tom. And why don’t you tell Harry what you’re doing to him, hmm?” She leaned back on one hand, still petting Harry absently with the other. He twisted his shoulders around so he could lean his head against her thigh. “Since it’s his first time to have a real cock. He’s taken my fingers before though, haven’t you Harry?”

Harry shuddered and nodded.

“And a couple of toys. He takes everything very well.” She rubbed the nape of Harry’s neck.

“I want to know what you feel like,” Tom said. “I’ve been wondering, all this time. I know what you felt like inside of us, and all the sounds you made when we fucked you.”

Ginny tensed, but she didn’t interrupt.

“But this will just be me, fucking you like I always dreamed of fucking you. I know you’ll love it; you’ll love it when I’m rough and fast, won’t you?”

Harry shuddered, and Ginny knew that Tom had put his finger in, because Harry arched his back to push against Tom’s hand. He loved having something in his arse. Tom was right, Ginny knew. He was going to love it, and hate himself for loving it, which would make him love it exponentially more.

Tom was already lining himself up. He was bigger than anything Ginny had ever put in Harry, so she watched with a sort of mesmerized unease as it Harry’s arsehole stretched around the bulbous head, pleased by how slow Tom was making himself move. She caught his eye and smiled lazily at him, and he grinned back. She hadn’t felt his swelling pride since the last time she’d let him take one of her exams, and this eclipsed anything she’d felt from him before. It was heady, to reward Harry and Tom with the prize of each other.

Tom was losing patience, and Harry was muffling his breathy cries against Ginny’s thigh, so she didn’t reprimand him when he snapped his hips forward, forcing himself the rest of the way in and eliciting a strangled cry from Harry. When he bottomed out, Ginny cupped Harry’s jaw and forced his head back, his neck at an uncomfortable angle.

“All right, love?”

“Yes,” Harry said, soft but unhesitating. Ginny released him and he kept himself lifted on his elbows, but lowered his forehead to her thigh, chest heaving.

Tom didn’t wait for Ginny this time; he began pulling back with his mouth slack, a bruising grip on Harry’s waist, and Harry managed to bend his knees and scramble into a position where the next punishing thrust would be easier to bear.

“How does he feel?” Ginny’s voice sounded too deep and melodic in her own ears, and she wondered if they’d accidentally channeled some sort of ritual magic between the three of them on the bed. She felt full up with power, buoyant.

“Tight,” Tom said, and he and Harry both breathed out hard when he thrust back in and then ground his hips against Harry in a semicircle. Tom threw his head back, and the line of his throat made Ginny finally lose her internal battle and shove the hand she wasn’t resting on Harry’s neck past the waistband of her jeans.

“He’s tight and warm,” Tom muttered. “Not as warm as us. You. But he feels as tight as a vice, he’s so greedy for it. He…” he pulled back only slightly this time before sliding all the way back in with a needy little whimper. “I’m going to come inside him,” he said tersely. “Ginevra, did you see how he takes my cock?”

“He’s very good,” Ginny agreed, rubbing herself through her panties, which were wringing wet. 

“You’re very good, Harry,” Tom said, and Harry muttered something that Ginny barely caught. She smiled at Tom’s quizzical look.

“He said ‘harder,’” she relayed.

Tom groaned and pulled Harry harder against him by the hips. Harry’s sweaty head left Ginny’s leg as he obediently got to his hands and knees. Tom rubbed the small of his back approvingly, and Ginny scooted forward and kissed Harry’s mouth. And then Tom fucked him almost violently, hard enough it had to hurt, badly, and unrelenting. 

Ginny left them to it. She was eager to watch, and with a little distance she could do just that. She kept her hand between her legs, unbuttoning her jeans so she could get a better angle from the wrist, and scooted back up against the headboard, which was striking the wall rhythmically.

Harry’s cock was hard against his stomach. His balls were already tight, as though he could come with the slightest encouragement. It wasn’t going to last very much longer; Tom had a remarkable will, but he was still a male virgin with the object of his decade-long fixation pushing back to meet his every thrust.

To prove that he could surprise anyone, Ginny included, Tom slowed his thrusts to shallow little pushes and pulls, and bent over Harry’s back, hands roaming his sides and making him shiver.

“I said I’d need you to beg,” he murmured.

“He did say that, Harry,” Ginny remarked. Harry was resting his head on his forearms. 

“Please,” Harry muttered, sounding miserable. Ginny thought of how desperately hot he must be. Someone he should hate in his arse, and ordered to beg.

“You should be more specific,” she admonished.

“Please, fuck me until you come. Come inside me,” Harry gasped.

Tom’s face was a sight. Ginny only wished she could see Harry’s. Tom’s eyes narrowed with focus, a sheen of sweat making him glow, or maybe that was the sheer self-satisfaction he radiated, his smirk dropping off as he began to lose himself in the rhythm, that final stretch that took even Tom out of his emotions and placed him in single-minded pursuit of his orgasm. When it came, it tore a hoarse shout from him.

He thrust shallowly a few times, barely withdrawing his cock but gently milking himself. He pulled out the second he was done, wincing, and reached his arms around Harry’s chest. He cradled him, back to chest, settling back on his haunches, Harry in the same posture, except he hung his head, shame-faced.

Ginny knew he was at his hardest; his cock so swollen it looked painful, straining against his stomach, his hands trembling with the restrained urge to jerk himself off.

He lifted his head and met Ginny’s eye. When he saw that she had her hand down her trousers, his eyes went glassy and the high color in his face eased somewhat. She’d distracted him from the humiliation of it all, she thought.

“Now that Tom’s fucked you, shall I?” Her mouth was watering at the sight of his cock. She was so wet and aching, even though she’d barely touched her clit.

“Yes. Please,” he added. Ginny smiled reprovingly, wriggling out of her jeans and panties altogether in record time.

“Oh, Harry, _I_ won’t make you beg. Or, would you like to fuck _me_?” She continued, unbuttoning her shirt. Harry had been staring at the crux of her thighs, the short red hairs there glistening from the smeared wetness, but now his eyes raced over her bare stomach, her small breasts and taut nipples. He always looked at her as greedily as he had their first night together.

“Come here,” she said, lying back, and he crawled up between her legs with a little whimper, fitted himself against her and slid all the way in with one thrust.

His arse had to be sore, and he was in every way wrung out, but when Ginny hooked her heels on the backs of his thighs in unspoken encouragement he fucked her steadily and deeply. He made her feel full and perfect. She’d missed him so much. And Harry’s cock was smaller than Tom’s, Tom’s body being everywhere in proportion. Tom’s cock would _hurt_ if he pounded her like he’d pounded Harry…

The strange thought, of Tom rutting against her with low animal noises instead of Harry, made her peak suddenly, almost an accident. It felt like forever since that happened to her. Harry felt it and let himself go, too, the tension all going out of his shoulders at once and then that primally satisfying feeling of a burst of heat and wetness inside her. He had lasted longer than she thought possible, given how overstimulated he must be. But then, not since they were teenagers had he dared to come before Ginny, not unless coming herself wasn’t in her plans for the encounter at all.

He was crying quietly against her shoulder, still coming in long waves, and Ginny twisted under him to generate the friction to prolong her own pulsing release. They didn’t usually come simultaneously; it was intense, but confusing. She petted Harry’s hair as best she could, keeping him close and inside, even though it made her wince. All the pressure which had been delicious now just felt like too much. But she couldn’t let go of Harry, crying and shaking and boneless, cutting off her air supply. She wouldn’t have dreamt of it.

Slowly, Ginny became conscious of Tom, pressed alongside them, kneading Harry’s shoulders, one leg tangled in theirs. They both held Harry until his tears stopped, and finally Ginny couldn’t bear it, she rolled Harry off of her and onto his side so they faced one another, Tom behind Harry, wrapping an arm around his torso to keep him close and connected.

Harry had that distant, dreamy look on his face that he got when they had this kind of sex. Ginny could feel it too, the euphoria that came from all the emotional and physical adrenaline culminating. It left her high but shaken; jubilant but fragile. She rested her head on the crumpled pillow beside Harry’s and laid her hand on his cheek.

“What do you need?”

He pulled her closer to him and leaned their foreheads together.

“Nothing.” He closed his eyes with a deep sigh. “Just you.”

****

Ginny must have fallen asleep, and when she woke again, it was dark. She could hear the ocean. Harry was sleeping with a peaceful, slack expression, and all of the come and slippery fluids that had been easy to disregard in the afterglow now felt sticky and uncomfortable. Ginny untangled herself, avoiding disturbing Harry. She found the wand Tom had gotten her, and as she had every time she picked it up, she thought of her own snapped wand with a pang. Then she breathed in, and cast cleaning spells on herself, Harry, the bed, and then the room in general. The smell of sex dissipated instantly, replaced with the salty smell of sea air.

Tom was outside the back door, which overlooked a tangle of an overgrown kitchen garden and beyond, the just-visible seam of the ocean horizon, barely discernible from the night sky.

“Well,” Ginny said, “How do you feel?” 

Tom didn’t look over, but he reached for her hand. Ginny took it, studying the long, carefully groomed fingers, the broad back, memorizing it. Tom’s own hand.

“You’re right,” she conceded. “That’s a silly question.” She stood beside him and leaned in, their clasped hands between them, her shoulder pressing against his upper arm.

“We have much to do,” Tom murmured. He looked down at Ginny and quirked a smile. “But it can wait.”

Ginny pulled back with a reproving look. “Tom, you have to be careful with him.”

His brows rose and his mouth curved intriguingly into a leer. “That’s not what either of you seemed to want a few hours ago…”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “That was _fucking_. It isn’t real life. I mean it, Tom. He isn’t like me. _He_ can leave if you don’t watch your step.”

That seemed to bring Tom up short, his eyes flashing dangerously, and he squeezed her hand in a cruel imitation of the affectionate clasp from moments before.

“Maybe,” he murmured, watching her intently. “But I’m not sure that’s _my_ problem. _You_ can’t leave, as you pointed out. And if Harry were to go, I’d be very unhappy. You wouldn’t like being nearby for that.”

Ginny scowled back. “You’re right,” she said coolly. “Your problems are my problems. But I don’t think you should forget that _my_ problems are _your_ problems too.” She tore loose from his hold and left him there.

Ginny hunched her shoulders as she walked fast back to the Cottage. She just wanted Harry, the way he was when he was sleepy and fucked out. He’d be almost too warm, and want to hold her close, and murmur in his sleep when she kissed him or stroked his back. She almost broke into a run to get back to their bed. Torn between hating herself and the selfish gratitude she had that Harry was waiting for her. That she’d let him follow her into Tom’s trap, and couldn’t even bring herself to regret it.


End file.
